This invention relates generally to painting equipment and more particularly to roller-type paint applicators.
The use of rollers for painting large areas of flat surfaces such as ordinary dry wall construction enjoys a growing popularity. Paint application using rollers offers two basic advantages over the use of a brush. Specifically, rollers hold more paint and a larger area can be covered with each dipping of a roller into the paint. Further, in most cases, painting with a roller provides a smoother and more uniform finish than does painting with a brush.
Paint roller trays such as that taught by Conner, U.S. Pat. No. 3,110,921, have been very popular with do-it-yourself home owners and others. These paint trays, which are suitable for use by one painter at a time, are inexpensive but awkward, easily tipped over, and difficult to manage when working from a ladder.
A disposable, flexible liner to facilitate the cleanup of a paint roller tray such as Conner's is taught by Bulb, U.S. Pat. No. 3,757,990.
In my prior pending U.S. patent application identified above, there has been disclosed a paint pail of single wall construction having a receptacle with the capacity for holding a gallon or more of paint in which a roller can be quickly, easily and evenly coated with paint. The receptacle is formed by a generally U-shaped wall disposed between and joined to two parallel side walls which extend vertically and are spaced apart from each other by a distance greater than the length of a conventional paint roller. The curvature of the U-shaped wall is such that the roller can be worked across it to remove essentially the last drop of paint stored in the receptacle, conserving paint. In comparison with paint trays now in widespread use, the paint pail allows a substantially greater volume of paint to be held, ready for immediate application. In addition, the placement of ridges on both branches of the U-shaped wall and the divergence upwardly of these two branches allows two painters to rub their rollers simultaneously across the ridges without interference.
In applicant's prior teachings, there is further disclosed a disposable liner for the paint pail. The liner allows one to switch readily from one paint color to another without cleaning the paint pail. The liner can also be used to store unused paint and a roller saturated with this same paint overnight. Once the painting job is completed, cleanup, using the liner, can be accomplished within a few minutes.
In addition, my earlier patent application discloses a paint pail supported by a wheeled caddy on which is detachably mounted an elongated, flat plate. The plate, which is employed as a shield, has a cutout which is dimensioned so that the plate can be fitted closely about one end of the wheeled caddy to keep paint from being splattered on the floor beneath the plate and caddy.